Can I use Google Cloud DNS to point to an instance with ephemeral external IP?

[Kunal Khanna]

I am new to cloud computing and have been learning this since a month. I have a domain registered from Godaddy. I manage it's DNS through Google Cloud DNS service. I understand that I can create A record to point the domain to an instance. But what if the instance has dynamic/ephemeral external IP? Is there any option available that makes a domain point to current IP of instance? If not, how people make their websites working without static IP? What is the use of ephemeral IP if people can't point their website/app to it? I hope no one would take headache of changing A records frequently. Please help me to get out of this confusion.

[Justin Reiners]

Sure, you need to use dynamic DNS provider, but at that point, why not just take a (free) static since it needs to be accessed by name.

I use ephemeral IP's on machines which just process data for me. I use gcloud to log in so I don't need the external IP, and sometimes I'd rather have the IP change on reboot, a service that runs on that box, processing SQL, big data, scrapers, or whatnot doing odd jobs. It also keeps it more secure since the address changes on reboot.

I'd still recommend a static IP address for a website. A static IP also works nicely for shifting the endpoint while keeping the public IP the same, as in moving traffic to a secondary instance for maintenance on the primary. 

On Thu, Mar 29, 2018 at 2:45 PM, Kunal Khanna <kunalkh...@gmail.com> wrote:

I am new to cloud computing and have been learning this since a month. I have a domain registered from Godaddy. I manage it's DNS through Google Cloud DNS service. I understand that I can create A record to point the domain to an instance. But what if the instance has dynamic/ephemeral external IP? Is there any option available that makes a domain point to current IP of instance? If not, how people make their websites working without static IP? What is the use of ephemeral IP if people can't point their website/app to it? I hope no one would take headache of changing A records frequently. Please help me to get out of this confusion.

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[Kamran (Google Cloud Support)]

Hello Kunal,

In this case, you can assign a static IP address to your VM instance to ensure that the A record created on DNS server is pointing to a permanent IP address. If your VM instance is already configured with an ephemeral IP address, you can safely promote that ephemeral external IP address to static type of external IP address by following the steps described in this article.

I hope this helps.